New engine technologies, such as diesel engines with a common-rail system and high pressure direct fuel injection, are finely tuned systems that are presenting new types of challenges or exacerbating challenges found in earlier engine technology. These new technologies are increasingly becoming more sensitive to fuel quality.
On top of the new engine technologies, fuel quality issues have been observed in some countries which cause issues in internal combustion engines, such as, for example, injector fouling due, for example, to fuel contamination, excessive wear of metal parts and corrosion due to low fuel lubricity, gums and other deposit formations due to fuel oxidation (e.g., in low quality biofuels).
Accordingly, new fuel additive technology is needed to ensure new engine technologies function properly and to deal with issues of poor fuel quality. By “fuel additive” it is meant here any additive allowing improvement in the distribution of the fuel in the engine and/or improvement in the operating performances of the engine and/or improvement in the operating stability of the engine over time.
Current solutions to prevent engine damage include aftermarket products in bottles or complex on-board dosing equipment with large rigid tanks, pumps, electronics and connections. It would be desirable to provide an additive package that can function to provide multiple benefits in performance over various qualities of fuels. It would be further beneficial if the multi-functional additive package could be provided in a form that can be continuously delivered to the engine, for example, from a small tank in a fuel filter, thereby relieving the consumer of the burden of constantly having to add an additive to their fuel at every fill up.